Guild Wars 2

Nerfing AOE is definitely not the answer, and I’m disappointed in ANet saying this.

in pvp, AOE can be dodged, aegised, run from, or walked from.

The aoe indicator should be made more obvious (shade the entire area red), but don’t reward window-lickers by neutering AOE.

in PVE, professions with lower survivability are compensated with AOE and balanced around it in order to hold their own, often times at the cost of single target damage. —
If you think AOE is trivializing dungeons, then you need to make the ai prefer aoe for interrupts and cc against player units

Compare a D/D elementalist to a warrior, there’s no contest.

Nerfing AOE will break the entire meta and put entire professions and weaponsets in the dustbin for MONTHS while you deal with the fallout.

I’m also very disappointed with ANet saying bunker eles are overpowered.

Eles are FORCED to spec bunker because they’re too squishy in both pve and pvp to do otherwise, and their damage to survival ratio as glass cannon builds is the worst in the game. As bunkers with defensive stats, their damage is lower for their major cooldowns than a 30/10/0/30/0 mesmer’s greatsword auto-attack.

Any boon strip spec or cc chain can kill ele.

Finally, i’m VERY disappointed that ANet is still ignoring the instagib and perma-stealth thief specs (they’re actually buffing permastealth by going after AOE damage, as if they were not bunker-ey enough being completely untargetable!)

It’s outrageous.

giving players more defensive tools to counter AoEs.

you mean like dodge, or aegis, or running, or walking?

how about just putting more than a red boundary on them, how about putting a red tint on the entire area to give a better cue.

Players who lick windows instead of getting out of aoe should not be catered to, but at the same time, large radius AOE in a zerg is very hard to spot due to the terrible marker.

how about ANET just make the entire radius red and see how well players do adjusting to that before destroying the entire meta by borking many weapon sets and entire professions by making their damage worthless?

90% of the elementalist weapon skills are AOE.

Elementalist damage-to-survival ratio is mediocre at best (which is why every ele specs 0/x/x/30/30) and NOTHING compared to warriors or guardians.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Might as well remove staff weapon from Elementalist.

Just because you may get several of those Elementalists clustered, doesn’t mean you should nerf their weapon attack.

This will off balance the game more than before.

GG…

You mean EVERY weapon.

Even scepter is technically an aoe weapon, and every attack that’s not a leap in dagger is an aoe.
Nerfing aoe is relegating elementalist to the dustbin of history.

Taikanaru.5746:

AoE is fine. Anet should show some statistics to prove otherwise.

It’s not about statistics.

I never saw one long or viable thread where people were ever complaining about AOE.

I also see entire professions based on AOE. (elementalist, for instance).

I see entire weapon sets built around aoe (pretty much every weapon with decent aoe has nearly ALL aoe on that weapon).

So what they’re saying is: they are now removing several weapon sets and professions from the game.

Tip for ANET: Nodoby likes feeling less powerful for no reason, and nobody likes being told how to play (So don’t do it unless it’s consistently ruining the days of the vast majority of the player base).

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

and that’s what I was asking, for actual builds and gear.

it seems that kind of damage is asking to be a floor stain when you get to read boss moves through a confusing mess of spell effects from the rest of the party and yourself.

If you have problems with seeing through spell effects, consider turning post processing off.

Still not seeing a build or gear post.. still seeing haviz talking down as usual.

clearly I don’t need the information i’ve requested, and clearly I’m being told to make my game uglier!

uugh.. nobody posts a straight answer anymore!

Sypher.6708:

Minoru, can you post your build or pm it to me? Sounds like my style!

Seconded.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

I have to say to the person bashing healing power above that it’s not really the case if you’re a 30 water ele.

healing power scales very well for 30 water eles, I definitely notice the difference on signet of restoration procs, and my ice breath does some serious healing numbers (I can heal half a warrior’s hp on my healing rotation, not shabby At all)

running all clerics will make your entire party VERY survivable, and is the new FOTM in FOTM.

Unfortunatly, he’s right. Healing power scales horribly. Assuming you have about 1200 healing power, cone of cold heals for 1124 instead of 740 (with 0 healing power) and passive from your signet heals for 322hp instead of 202. Yet you do 3 times less damage. This game is about active damage mitigation, not passive. Playing a healer only gimps your party.

The HP pools are so absurd in pve that the best way to play this game is to outlast.

A boss fight lasting 15% longer but having 50% fewer downs is preferable to the alternatives.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

I ask because I have similar gear to what you’re quoting and I’m definitely not seeing churning earth hitting (or critting) for 9k + bleeds.

Because you can’t hit for 9k with CE with pvt plus clerics gear with only 10-20 trait points in air line. I hit for about 10k-12k with CE with knight’s armour and everything zerker with 0 in fire and 25 in air.

and that’s what I was asking, for actual builds and gear.

it seems that kind of damage is asking to be a floor stain when you get to read boss moves through a confusing mess of spell effects from the rest of the party and yourself.

skinnyb.5920:

plasmacutter.2709:

Calle.8746:

Just lol… I promise you bro, if you only stay in fire, even though you’re traited glass cannon and I’m traited more as a hybrid semi pewpew/tanky tank I’m gonna do more damage than you are.

I take it as you play with staff, if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. Myself, I play D/D.

Now you spam your no.1. Throw in a burn once in a while. Maybe drop down metor shower. Hitting your awesome wicked badazz damage. Cool cool.

I keep constant burns and bleeds on my target. Even if they may not be ‘perma’ burns and bleeds I always have atleast one of em’ up. Ontop of that my max crits with stuff like Cunning Earth, Fire Grab, Burning speed is ~6(when I got no might stacks)- ~9k when I got 25 might stacks. And on top of that I hit 1,2k-1.5k with each auto attack in lightning (as lightning being the auto attack I find myself using the most). And just as a side note, dagger auto attacks are twice as fast as staff.

You ask yourself how you’d do more damage by changing to another attunement? Now you play staff, and I think staff suck so I don’t play it so can’t tell you much about the combos you could use there but with dagger.

Starting out in Earth throwing down a Cunning Earth – BAAM 9k+8 stacks of bleed. Ring of Earth BAAM another 2.5k and another stack of bleed. Change to fire, Bruning Speed BAAM 9k plus burning. Fire grab BAAM 9k, Ring of fire another 2.5k and change to lighting RTL BAM 2k plus spamming auto attacks for 1.5k each hit with bleed and burning on. Repeat and repeat and repeat. So by the time you spam your no.1 skill in fire I’ve been doing kitten load of damage.

AND beyond me doing more damage I also provide support to my group.

So have you acctually put your hands on an Elementalist?

And what’s that crap about “the traits are realy not that hard to figure out.”? Did you know that there’s more than 1 glass cannon build? Amazing isn’t it!! woooo.
if you’re gonna be a smartass atleast have the brains for it.

Interested in what gear and traits you’re running for this, and how squishy you are if you get caught in an attack.

Not being hostile here, I’m interested because I run a more support oriented build, and am wondering how this would work in FotM to increase damage.

(hey, I like big numbers too!)

I’m not him but I have a pretty good idea what he’s running.

Probably 0/10/0/30/30 or perhaps 0/20/0/30/20 for higher crits and CD’s on air skills.
p/v/t gear with Monk & Water runes. Knights & Clerics accessories.

Along with Sigil of Battle which gives you might on attunement swap (every 9 secs), you can throw down Ring of Fire and then Arcane Blast for area might, and then Earthquake & Churning earth within RoF for two more area might blast finishers bringing you to 13 stacks in ~5 seconds. With that and the perma-fury from auras, you get around 2000 power and ~45% crit chance.

I ask because I have similar gear to what you’re quoting and I’m definitely not seeing churning earth hitting (or critting) for 9k + bleeds.

haviz.1340:

Start with something like full knight’s gear (Tou/Pow/Pre) or even full soldier (Pow/Vit/Tou) and gradually change your gear to more damage oriented (berserker primarily) when you get used to mitigating damage through good usage of endurance, protection, blocks and cantrips.

Nice advice.

I have to say to the person bashing healing power above that it’s not really the case if you’re a 30 water ele.

healing power scales very well for 30 water eles, I definitely notice the difference on signet of restoration procs, and my ice breath does some serious healing numbers (I can heal half a warrior’s hp on my healing rotation, not shabby At all)

running all clerics will make your entire party VERY survivable, and is the new FOTM in FOTM.

same – want the option to put a utility in an elite slot.

i’d rather have a decent damage low cooldown ability, or add arcane shield to 3 cantrips, then imitate a twister without the redneck to say i’m like a freight train.

Calle.8746:

Just lol… I promise you bro, if you only stay in fire, even though you’re traited glass cannon and I’m traited more as a hybrid semi pewpew/tanky tank I’m gonna do more damage than you are.

I take it as you play with staff, if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. Myself, I play D/D.

Now you spam your no.1. Throw in a burn once in a while. Maybe drop down metor shower. Hitting your awesome wicked badazz damage. Cool cool.

I keep constant burns and bleeds on my target. Even if they may not be ‘perma’ burns and bleeds I always have atleast one of em’ up. Ontop of that my max crits with stuff like Cunning Earth, Fire Grab, Burning speed is ~6(when I got no might stacks)- ~9k when I got 25 might stacks. And on top of that I hit 1,2k-1.5k with each auto attack in lightning (as lightning being the auto attack I find myself using the most). And just as a side note, dagger auto attacks are twice as fast as staff.

You ask yourself how you’d do more damage by changing to another attunement? Now you play staff, and I think staff suck so I don’t play it so can’t tell you much about the combos you could use there but with dagger.

Starting out in Earth throwing down a Cunning Earth – BAAM 9k+8 stacks of bleed. Ring of Earth BAAM another 2.5k and another stack of bleed. Change to fire, Bruning Speed BAAM 9k plus burning. Fire grab BAAM 9k, Ring of fire another 2.5k and change to lighting RTL BAM 2k plus spamming auto attacks for 1.5k each hit with bleed and burning on. Repeat and repeat and repeat. So by the time you spam your no.1 skill in fire I’ve been doing kitten load of damage.

AND beyond me doing more damage I also provide support to my group.

So have you acctually put your hands on an Elementalist?

And what’s that crap about “the traits are realy not that hard to figure out.”? Did you know that there’s more than 1 glass cannon build? Amazing isn’t it!! woooo.
if you’re gonna be a smartass atleast have the brains for it.

Interested in what gear and traits you’re running for this, and how squishy you are if you get caught in an attack.

Not being hostile here, I’m interested because I run a more support oriented build, and am wondering how this would work in FotM to increase damage.

(hey, I like big numbers too!)

i’ve saved a PDF of this discussion.

It will be submitted to IGN and MMOChampion.

Daylight is the remedy to corruption.

Try an unusual weapon set for the professions and see if that fixes things.

I know on my low level toons I always make it a mission to penetrate camps and solo the vets and champs that are there.

If you want excitement and reward for skill, try going D/D ele with as many points in air and fire as you can get.. ridiculous damage, no babying. You get hit, you die. It’s like FOTM 20 with no AR in open world.

Raine.1394:

plasmacutter.2709:

Raine.1394:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Ele for me, because the other 7 classes (4 of which I have at 80, necro, guardian, mesmer, warrior) just put me to sleep at this point.

And, if you were defining ‘best’ as that profession/spec that required, and more importantly, rewarded, skillful play I would have to further qualify it as the d/d elementalist. It also qualifies as having the most synergistic build that I’ve seen in the game. It is the only profession that I’ve obsessively watched videos of in action. The d/d elementalist in the right hands is both pure art and effectiveness.

You forgot variety of play.

glass cannon
tank
ranged
melee
aoe
single target

it does them all, and it does them all while being fun, engaging, and not overpowered (except maybe scepter.. that thing just sucks unless your enemy is afk)

I want to emphasize “not overpowered” just in case Anet is listening. The showcase here is player skill, not an inherently overpowered profession.

well, each spec can’t do it all, each one has its own achilles heels, group utility level (or lack thereof), and damage caps (which always balance well against survivability).

Being able to build and gear for any role is the goal of arenanet for every profession.

Elementalist got there first.

Yes.

I came to this game determined to play at a measured pace, and have successfully done so.

With the exception of HORRENDOUS management of the player economy so far, the game has fit the bill.

There are always ways to make it better, but so far it’s been excellent.

Raine.1394:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Ele for me, because the other 7 classes (4 of which I have at 80, necro, guardian, mesmer, warrior) just put me to sleep at this point.

And, if you were defining ‘best’ as that profession/spec that required, and more importantly, rewarded, skillful play I would have to further qualify it as the d/d elementalist. It also qualifies as having the most synergistic build that I’ve seen in the game. It is the only profession that I’ve obsessively watched videos of in action. The d/d elementalist in the right hands is both pure art and effectiveness.

You forgot variety of play.

glass cannon
tank
ranged
melee
aoe
single target

it does them all, and it does them all while being fun, engaging, and not overpowered (except maybe scepter.. that thing just sucks unless your enemy is afk)

Lazy.2389:

Lolipok, you might want to reread plasmacutter’s post before you throw out insults. It’s shocking that he replied so magnanimously.

“I need higher stats because I can’t beat the infinite dungeon” is so absurd it actually made me laugh.

Well, it’s not meant to be “infinite”, the difficulty is.

Once you have full ascended and full AR, the maximum difficulty you can complete becomes a testament to your skill at the game and in team-coordination.

It’s like a dead-lift competition. The person who can lift the most wins bragging rights, but the weight racks are not meant to be a requirement to complete the match.

coordination is a skill as well.

My point stands.

It’s supposed to provide “harder-modes” until you can’t conceivably overcome the difficulty, at which point you have reached the apex of what is possible for you and your group.

I’m not saying L2P or “lol ur bad”, im merely commenting on the way the dungeon is set up.

Most of my guildies hover in the 20’s.

I see very few over lvl 30 in LA overflows.

I contend that you have reached the point where the difficulty curve has become a cliff.

Silentstorm.7531:

His suggestion is what I said in the vid to begin with lol…..

You are aware that youtube converts most of their vids to flash, which, despite tuning off hardware acceleration, still will underclock your gpu permanently until driver reload?

I try to avoid youtube links like the plague. Youtube is now a remote version of what the old fileshare apps like kazaa used to do to your system locally.

FPS tanks by 50-60% and your system just crawls.

Why not use print? people can read!

You suffer from bounded rationality.

The point of fractal — hence the name — is to provide an infinite difficulty curve — apparently gated by gear with AR (I hear they are revisiting this concept, ad gear-gating breaks the manifesto, but I’m not holding my breath)

Congratulations, you are nearly at the hard cap of your own gear and skill. You have accomplished the point of fractal.

(I also suspect the point of fractals is to provide a LOT of hard data to determine the proper difficulty balance for explorable tuning going forward)

The issue doesn’t seem to be confusion itself, it’s confusion used on abilities that are ALREADY FIRING.

Confusion should only apply damage if you consciously press a button on your bar to use an ability. If you’re channeling something and hit with confusion, it should not apply damage until you, the player, input another keystroke on the action bar.

People who can’t be bothered to look at their conditions should not be spared the wrath of confusion, but people who are already channeling abilities they can’t cancel should not be punished either for something beyond their control.

Confusion, if anything, is too cumbersome. It should behave more like an offensive version of aegis.. you put it on someone and it lasts a long time, stacking in duration instead of intensity, until the next ability is used, and hits for significant damage (I keep thinking C&D level damage), but only once.

how about just not being ham-handed, overzealous, and unimaginative with the nerfs — and testing them on a public test server?

This patch FINALLY got rid of an abusive exploit that was causing shatter to do A FULL 200% OF RATED DAMAGE.

Could you possibly WAIT TO SEE IF THIS WORKS before borking the only interesting and good thing to happen to mesmer pve in a while (might stacking)?

I’m posting this for the people left playing mesmer, because after the “blind makes mesmer and ONLY mesmer unable to summon” patch, and this patch, I’m done, I know ANet just doesn’t want to give the light of day to mesmers in any measured way.

I’m now playing ele, where even in cleric spec and gear I can breathe fire, then ice onto a pack (or just hit meteor shower) and get nearly every one to sparkle in a DE.

Meanwhile, thieves run around with their insta-kill-before-render mug-backstab specs and ANet makes a thread asking them how they prefer to be balanced.. allowing it to go on for months.

Stop holding double-standards to mesmers.

FreshCookies.7024:

go play a engineer then you have all the right in the world to complain

Sorry, can’t hear you over all the grenades making piles of shiny corpses out of everything in every DE the game has to offer, giving engies more rares per hour than anyone else in the game, even with the new nerfed grenade damage.

Also, thanks for the heal from the turret, it does more than the entire mesmer profession, including mantra builds.

Silentstorm.7531:

Ok you named one class out of 8 lol…..So everyone must reroll Elementalis? That’s not really a viable suggestion. Also if you had to adjust for growth of the game you just gotta suck that up. I’m pretty sure people would concur that they take growth over worrying about one mouse.

If you want more skills on the bar, the other games are that-a-way.

I’m fine with forrae’s suggestion: add skills to weapons that can be swapped out, perhaps offering the capacity to focus more on offense, defense, control, or support — makes pvp less predictable.

more skills on the bars just gives me terrible nightmares remembering rift and the other wow clones.

The fact that 80% of a legendary’s components are gold sinks instead of reflections of mastery of the game make me look down upon people who wield them.

The first thought to go through my head is:
so, which one did they exploit:
godskull?
snowflake jewelry?
gold buying?
6,000 real dollars into the gem store?

then there’s the insult to the injury, every exotic worth having that has looks ranging from nearly-as-good to better on the skin scale is tied to either charged or corrupted lodestones, but mostly charged.
Ever tried to get foefire’s essence or volcanus? Have fun with those.. might as well buy a few precursors for that price. Thought you would farm the lodestones for yourself? Say hello to permanent account wide DR making sure you don’t see even one for a week while the bots continue to crash the market for T6 mats unabated.

It’s sad.

The best weapon skins should come from mastering aspects of the game.

Heck, they should be themed based on what you’ve done.

You should be able to achieve benevolent weapon and armor skins by raising downed and dead allies/using group-altruistic abilities in combat, or jumping in to save a pvp allie in critical condition. Maybe some dark and deathly looking ones for large numbers of pvp kills, or aggressive looking ones for boss kills or challenge modes, or very odd technological ones for completing puzzles or discovering easter eggs.

Each of these would be earnable naturally by “just playing the game” and reflect your playstyle in the process. Then you could make similar-styled items that are craftable for people who like the tone of an outfit but prefer some other playstyle.

The gold sink needs to go though.

take screenshots and send to the report email address.

I’ve seen other hacks.. people flying for instance.

vespers.1759:

want to hear a joke?

logan thackeray.

lololol most useless NPC ever created.

I thought that was rhytlock.

Every pull someone in my group has to pull him off the floor.

At least detha lives sometimes.

If you want more weapon skills, please play elementalist.

if I had to go from 20 to 24 i’d probably have to untie my fingers.

Also. the game’s skill bars were pretty much custom-built for razr nostromo

Without it, i’d probably go insane, and adding another skill to the bar would do this.

In order:

Guardian, elementalist, warrior

Each of these is capable of the following (on a balancing scale), where most others are not:

• insane group support (boons, healing, or control)
• insane damage (both single target and aoe depending on weapons kit) OR insane survivability (based on traits)
• multiple pvp options (others are pidgeon-holed.. mesmers are portal bots unless 1v1, thiefs are 1v1 or gtfo)
• multiple build options (they have good trait synergy on most builds and can build for anything along the continuum from selfish bunker to glass cannon)

You notice these 3 a LOT in speed runs, often in multiples, while others just happen to show up here and there.

Minion of Vey.4398:

Precursors can be pretty brutal, I agree on that.

That said, I imagine the cost to make a legendary would just disperse itself across the board if precursors were easier to get. If the desirable precursors were common enough that you could buy them for 50g or something, it’d just increase demand for all the other stuff. T6 mats would cost 4s more each, lodestones an extra 30s, ectos another 5s, and so on (just made up some numbers).

Which probably isn’t good for the game since that impacts the non legendary market pretty meaningfully.

Any recipe which requires charged or corrupted lodestones is already producing exotics which cost more to create than it does to sell the mats and buy a precursor.

I’d like to see invisible barriers put up on waypoints when bosses are engaged.

This would prevent corpse-conga boss fights and force people to learn and help their downed.

other than that, I think a few more mechanics requiring intelligence such as stopping dps (projectile reflects, super-retaliation) and heals that need to be interrupted by knocking down defiance, etc should be added.

The boss fights are still far more interactive than simply ’don’t stand in fire and dish out as much dps or heals as possible’

TWMagimay.9057:

Rogacz.9865:

Oh just like every other jewelcrafting recipe? Like this?
Beryl Mithril Ring
Ingredients:
1X Mithril Setting[s]
1X Mithril Band[s]
3X Embellished Brilliant Beryl Jewel[s]

3X Embellished Brilliant Beryl Jewel[s]

3X

3

I wouldnt say just like when other jewelcrafting recipies you at most get back 1/3 of jewels back. Again, deliberately ignoring the obvious.

Oh, so there is always a perfect pattern and it repeats itself without exception? Like this:

Exquisite Passiflora Jewel
Ingredients:
1x Glob of Ectoplasm
1x Orichalcum Filigree
15x Passion Flowers

15x Passion Flowers

15x

15

Thus, by your logic, everybody who crafted a Passiflora Jewel exploited the system because the pattern doesn’t fit in with the rest of the Exquisite Jewels. Very interesting theory.

PS: Every time you say it was obvious you are calling the devs incompetent. Unlike you, some people assume that’s not the case and that devs(and paid testers alike) are intelligent people qualified for their job who can’t possibly miss smth this obvious…because they get paid not to… Do you know what happens when a doctor misses an obvious condition and a patient dies? The doctor loses his licence. And nobody tells the patient and his family they “should’ve known better”.

I’ve read glassdoor on ANet and recognize the environment — telltale signs are present in other updates as well.

There seems to be little communication between sub-departments until it’s too late.

balance team for pvp does not communicate with profession design team for pve — it’s engaged on an “omg the community is FUMING” basis (unless it’s thief, in which case it’s ignored)

I get the feeling the economy team and crafting team are in similarly disjointed state.

Communication channels and inter-team integration need some fixing, I think.

Ramiah.5648:

DestregA.5314:

If you havn’t been pvping on your mesmer you missed out.

It’s never been good at pve, play a warrior for that. You actually get loot.

You know why I still haven’t really played a mesmer, even though I find the actual gameplay incredibly fun? This. This right here.
And the slow movement across Tyria, but mostly this.

Exactly.

The people who didn’t even bother to read what I was saying just don’t get it.

ANet has been ham-handed and un-thoughtful with their treatment of the profession.

I’m very much a proponent of balance.

We had a bug that was causing our “truck move” to hit like a “100 megaton nuke” which came to light at the same time as a patch which gave us an arguably moderate but needed boost to our damage output in a way which can be negated by any intelligent pvp-er (clones that don’t make it to the target don’t shatter and don’t grant might!).

Instead of fixing the big one and waiting responsibly, they killed one few piece of good news they’ve ever given the profession in addition.

Coupled with the other game-breaking mechanic penalties which apply to mesmer and nobody else, the direction is clear.

Why would anyone play a profession which is so clearly marked as the red-headed step-child of ANet’s unbridled wrath?

Meanwhile, thieves can still kill 80% of profession builds in the 2 seconds before they render, and my D/D ele can, in cleric’s gear, tag up on 8 times the number of mobs as my shatter/condition hybrid mesmer can in rampager.

The hypocrisy is thick.

Or you could properly calibrate your screen and get the same effect.

I’m more interested in tweaks which can improve performance.

ShaiHulud.7410:

Hello guys!

In the last week I have been farming the sparks @ Malchor’s Leap in order to get enough lodestones for my legendary.

It’s a tedious process and maybe boring for some but I usually enjoy grinding. It relaxes me, especially that I am doing it with my guild and we are on TS3 all the time , chatting about w/e.

I can say that I have been farming in that spot for days and a lot of hours, however I did change zones for different meta events (dragons) but then came back to the same spot, killing the same mobs all over.

Everything was ok in regards to drops until yesterday afternoon when BOOM. Something happened.

I am running on almost 190 % magic find (including guild banner, guild boost etc.)

The drops were ok, stones were dropping (sometimes quick, other times rarer). Was also getting decent number of rares, even exotics.

However, since yesterday afternoon everything changed. I saw that I wasn’t getting any rares at all. No stones at all. Only T6 mats, tophies and loads of trash and blue items.
The green items were also rare.

I am 100 % positive I am under a permanent DR at this point.

I tried to do a few dungeons (like fractals, cof, ac), I changed zones again but its the same thing. The mobs from dungeons drop the same loot and it feels like this DR is haunting me forever now.

I just need someone who can help me with this and tell me how to get rid (reset) this DR?

Not playing is not an option since I am the guild leader of one of the most active guilds on our server. But also staying in one spot or completely changing zones isn’t working for me. I would do it if i knew it would work. But i see the DR is still here.

So how do I get rid of it?

Thank you!

p.s. Any troll comments will get reported. This is a serious matter and it’s affecting my gameplay really bad at this point.

Have fun with this… I play 2 days a week, 3 to 6 hours per day, and since the 11/15 patch, I’ve been in the same boat as you. The DR on my account is permanent and I get squat while my guildies have banked full stacks of ectos since that patch.

ANet doesn’t acknowledge it, even.

I’ve had to get creative to make any money at all. I’m probably going to have to get a precursor by using the mystic toilet (which is confirmed NOT to have dr ever by dev posts) because I’ll never be able to buy one at this rate.

Goettel.4389:

Agreed, TS.

The open-world content that’s already in place is great – so great I’m really enjoying just alting without doing instances, but especially the DE’s that are already in place feel too small in scope and too repetitive, like placeholders. Vastly increasing the number, scope and depth of the DE’s in the world is going to lift this game from excellent to peerless, IMO.

I’d like to see the individual DE’s turned into zone-wide campaigns, and the way those events play out scripted out over a period of a week to a month rather than a couple hours. If they program it right they can alter the flow of these campaigns to make them feel unique with the flip of a few variables.

It would create a world in which the dynamic events never felt the same twice.

Saulius.8430:

well. DR is same for everyone. so where do you see inaccuracies?

Except it’s not.

It’s buggy and ANet won’t fess up to it.

I play my account in fits and starts.. usually two sessions a week for extended periods (3-6 hours), most of that time spent in one zone fully exploring it.

This seems to trigger the ‘bot flag’, and after the first hour my entire account gets zero loot, while my buddies who zone-hop get ludicrous amounts of ectos.

It’s discriminatory and punishes people who play to enjoy a zone.

The concept of DR is an idiotic one, instituting DR on a bot does not make it “give up”, it just prompts deployment of 5 bots instead to get the same “farm haul” while regular players get punished. To see what effect DR has on bots, just look at the continued depression of armored scale prices — in other words, no effect at all

In dynamic events, you CAN have a large number of players.

I know for instance that teq and shatterer have hp that’s pretty low as-is on sea of sorrows.

I can have shatterer called at-spawn, waypoint there immediately, and by the time I’m in a position to attack it’s down 50%

In dungeons, I would love to see lower hp, but other mechanics (think arah p4)

Snowy.9580:

Fasalina.6571:

nethykins.7986:

No extra content? Wow, well I guess what they said about an expansions worth of stuff being added soon was a lie?

“In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.””

Did you read the whole post?

He means… “No new content” equals old content revamped & maybe some of the newer items added to it.. ie. more FotM kitten.

I get the feeling FOTM will be substantially emptier when they put ascended gear on the karma vendors and dynamic event chests.

I re-rolled a D/D ele

nothing slow about that.

Osicat, this is nice for pvp, and I don’t doubt that mesmer is still more than fine there, but the might stacking was finally generating lootable corpses in pve, where the only reliable way to stack the might came from greatsword and staff clones that stood at range (and thus would not be insta-killed by the swarm of undead).

It was the defining factor in making mesmer capable of appreciable loot in these events and in other zergy dungeons. (I keep thinking coe and certain FOTM in addition to cursed shore).

It is now gone, and not because it necessarily needed to go. The bug fix was probably enough.

ANet does not care about mesmer players. Apparently the class is not popular enough to represent a credible player-exodous threat, so they are free to slap around anyone who plays mesmer like a cheap hooker rather than take a measured approach.

Compare this to how the devs are actually starting forum threads asking thieves how they would prefer to be balanced.

It speaks volumes to me.

The patch represents the lack of consideration the devs have for mesmer play experience.

The biggest culprit in the overpowered burst was a ludicrous damage boost from bugged shatter calculation — and they did something to stop this (and again, this is VERY ironic considering it went unnoticed from launch until you could get 25 stacks of might due to how limp mesmer damage in general is)

instead of stopping there to “wait and see”, however, they borked the might stacking that had finally, at long last, un-sucked mesmer’s ability to generate lootable corpses in pve

This is the latest in a long string of patches in which mesmers have received a rifle-butt to the face.

The injustice regarding our summons vs others was just another example.

I’m done with it. My mesmer is now a bank toon until ANet decides they actually care about the experience of people who play the profession outside of s/tpvp.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

And the phantasm itself could be blinded, negating a hit WITHOUT a double-standard where a SUMMON could be stopped by blind.

Soon you gonna tell me you can dodge illusions. It’s the design, get over it.

Specious argument.

I’m calling a summon a summon:

characteristics of summons -
-the unit is independent and initiates its own attacks, which are considered independent of the summoning player
-the unit is persistent
-the unit has independent hp
-the unit can be independently targeted and damaged
-the unit is capable of initiating its own buffs

Phantasms have every one of those characteristics.

I’m calling a corvette a bus

- it has an engine
- it has 4 wheels
- it’s ridden by a driver
- etc, etc

Semantics, man.

Again, the bug that was causing 100% extra mind wrack damage was there since launch. It went unnoticed until an extra 25% damage was added via might stacks (which actually added another 50% damage to the resulting exploit – meaning mind wrack did not become “overpowered” until it had reached a full 250% of its rated damage!) . They didn’t wait to see if cutting this exploit which was causing mind wrack to hit for DOUBLE would fix the issue first before going after what was finally making pve bearable.

1 might doesn’t equal to 1% more damage. It’s a bit more than that. Again, 0.25s gcd is nothing, odds that you need another shatter in 0.25s are really low.

Yep, those of us who don’t play stockbroker on the TP need to actually loot things to survive.

I never played TP. You can get money by simple playing dungeons (and as you’ve said you speedclear them).

No, you’re calling a corvette a stone, while I’m calling it a vehicle. No semantics here. Your’e insisting all the characterstics I listed are not there, OR that all direct damage spells have them. Let me know when I can independently kill 100 blades with an auto attack, get two chances to dodge, blind, or block it, and can addle the attack itself with weakness in addition to the casting player. Until then, stop insulting the intelligence of people who read this tread.

And the issue is not so much the CD on the shatter skills, it’s the CD on the shatter skills PLUS the removal of the might.. and the removal of the might is the operative word here.

You conveniently ignored what I have been saying, AGAIN.

The 0.25 second CD was a band-aid to stop the bug that was causing an extra 100% damage on shatter which could only happen if you were in point blank range and were very twitchy (e.g. this did NOT work in or affect pve)..

Did they wait to see what removing this exploit (and thus 50% effective damage) from shatter would do before shafting PVE? No.. that would reflect consideration of the people who paid for the title and play mesmer in pve.

It represents utter contempt for the mesmer playerbase.

Mesmers once again cannot stack enough might to make bodies sparkle in cursed shore. This is bad enough in itself, but the lack of consideration for the people who play mesmer — the lack of patience to actually wait and see if reducing mind wrack damage by a full 50% works before taking away this might stacking.. this reflects upon the systematic way they look at mesmers, and how they consider the playerbase. (they don’t consider them at all).

I’m done.. i’m shelving it.. and I encourage others to do the same. They actually give consideration to elementalists, guardians, and even refuse to act against the ludicrous insta-gib that is backstab thief, but they apologize to the community for DARING to let mesmers get loot from what they help kill!

haviz.1340:

The single target lock-in is enough to justify blind. Plus, phantasms do much more damage than other summons so you need to be able to blind those attacks.

And the phantasm itself could be blinded, negating a hit WITHOUT a double-standard where a SUMMON could be stopped by blind.

And I’d say that your assertion that illusions are summons is just as ridiculous as asserting a corvette is a bus because it has 4 wheels.

Specious argument.

I’m calling a summon a summon:

characteristics of summons -
-the unit is independent and initiates its own attacks, which are considered independent of the summoning player
-the unit is persistent
-the unit has independent hp
-the unit can be independently targeted and damaged
-the unit is capable of initiating its own buffs
-the unit is subject to conditions and interruption.

Phantasms have every one of those characteristics.

Now the question as to whether phantasms SHOULD be attacks and not summons is another one – This could be done by removing all of the above and making phantasms a complicated spell animation – and i’d be fine with this, but you can’t with a straight face call an obvious summon an attack, and subject a summon to all the negatives of both summons AND direct attacks.

What did they take away? 0.25s cooldown? Extra might that was way overpowered?

Again, the bug that was causing 100% extra mind wrack damage was there since launch. It went unnoticed until an extra 25+% damage was added via might stacks (which actually added another 50+% damage to the resulting exploit – meaning mind wrack did not become “overpowered” until it had reached a full 250+% of its rated damage! — when something has to reach 250+% of its rated value before it’s considered OP, does that not qualify it as “gimp”? Imagine if they added even an extra 5% to 100blades) . They didn’t wait to see if cutting this exploit which was causing mind wrack to hit for DOUBLE would fix the issue first before going after what was finally making pve bearable.

Who still does DE? I thought everyone was doing fotm

Cute.

Miserable in pve? Are we playing same game?

Yep, those of us who don’t play stockbroker on the TP need to actually loot things to survive.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

TPVP – portal bot (just like in wvw(vw) )

There isn’t always a mesmer in speed clears. My speed clears have had multiple of the following:
guardian
warrior
elementalist

in fact, every dungeon run I do on my ele that has a mesmer is noticeably slower due to their kitten poor damage in everything BUT 1v1 pvp.

As for your continued arguments that phantasms are not summons.. just no. They are summons. Many of them are not even offense, they stick around after one animation, they provide boons to the group, they are independently targetable and capable of death — which backs up the fact they are summons and not attacks, conditions, or hexes.

tpvp, mes is still the best duelist.

Your speedclears might not include mesmer but you will get the quickest times with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer. If you build your mesmer around condition damage, then yes, their damage is bad (confusion being bad condition in pve is mostly the reason for this).

No, thief is the best duelist.

4 warriors + mesmer is a subjective argument. My quickest time thus far was 2 eles, 2 warriors, 1 guardian. (for an idea on the dps, the path 3 mounds couldn’t even spawn a single non-vet before they were gone)

We can argue about phantasms but facts are facts. They are different from every summon in the game.

The only differences are the HP and the single-target lock-in.

Your assertion that phantasms and clones are not summons is just as ridiculous as asserting a corvette is not a car because it doesn’t have a back seat.

Again – mesmer has been GOD AWEFUL in dynamic events and any pve where the number of targets exceeds 1. The last build made this “not suck nearly as much”. Now they take it away over an unrelated bug that caused 100% extra shatter damage.

I’m going to say this because it needs to be said:

When a profession has a bug that is applicable to all builds that causes 100% extra damage, and it goes unnoticed until they can get 25 stacks of might, that profession was probably severely gimped on damage.

For the rest of the people who don’t care about actually being able to loot mobs in dynamic events, this patch may not suck as much, but it’s indicative of the complete lack of forethought and consideration for the people who actually play the profession.

This is very different than the attention and care taken with thieves — and please let me know when a mesmer can kill 80% of players in pvp before they render like thieves can.

It’s not some melodromatic option. It’s a calculated reaction to the attitude taken toward the mesmer profession and playerbase by the corporate culture in ANet, and, just like I can see where winds are blowing in an office environment, I see where the winds are blowing here.

ANet does not care about how miserable pve mesmers are at this point, and were audacious enough to offer an apology for daring to make them pve viable for a few weeks.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

Your false-equivalencies of a summon (and our primary resource generation) to an attack is an insult to the intelligence of the rest of the community, now please go back to whatever it is you actually play (badly).

Do you need more analogies? Phantasms behave like hexes, they are not typical summons.

I play mesmer (badly) and your whining is just hilarious and unfounded. Why do you think there’s always a mesmer in speed clears in dungeons? Always a mesmer in high tpvp team composition? Because they make good banks?

Your countless threads about blind being an interrupt is just a coterie of people unable to adapt and comprehend simple basic mechanics. Whine further or adapt.

TPVP – portal bot (just like in wvw(vw) )

There isn’t always a mesmer in speed clears. My speed clears have had multiple of the following:
guardian
warrior
elementalist

in fact, every dungeon run I do on my ele that has a mesmer is noticeably slower due to their kitten poor damage in everything BUT 1v1 pvp.

As for your continued arguments that phantasms are not summons.. just no. They are summons. Many of them are not even offense, they stick around after one animation, they provide boons to the group, they are independently targetable and capable of death — which backs up the fact they are summons and not attacks, conditions, or hexes.

haviz.1340:

plasmacutter.2709:

So if you blind a necro during summon flesh golem it will ‘miss’, thus putting flesh golem on cd and negating all subsequent damage?

are you THICK man? the threads showing how blind is interrupt++ instead of just stopping one attack have been done in every relevant forum at least 4 times.

Flesh golem isn’t phantasm. Do you need to target anything to use flesh golem? Does flesh golem disappears when his target dies? Stop throwing insults and crying.

sephire.7296:

A Flesh Golem is a pet, a Phantasm is an attack; it’s a single target living DoT. They don’t and shouldn’t behave the same way.

Honestly, is it because the class is pink that it attracts so many melodramatic people?

Mesmers are still top of the pile as a class, and if you disagree it’s because frankly, you weren’t a very good Mesmer to begin with.

Your false-equivalencies of a summon (and our primary resource generation) to an attack is an insult to the intelligence of the rest of the community, now please go back to whatever it is you actually play (badly).

As for anyone saying mesmer is bad being bad at mesmer, another sweeping generalization by someone who plays a roamer in pvp only.

Mesmer in dynamic events was utter crap before shattered strength provided some oomph to greatsword builds. Now it’s utter crap again because instead of just fixing the bug making mind wrack do 100% more damage and waiting they boned what was finally making mesmers pve viable.

Rainu.6871:

Another fine example of changes to pvp that mess up pve. I wish anet would realize they need to split the skills between pvp and pve or they will just keep running into problems like this.

No, they need to learn PATIENCE and put up a public test realm with feedback options.

The might stacking was not the issue. The posts by experienced mesmers in the PVP forums did the math and explained the basics of the exploit which was causing 100% extra mind wrack damage.

Instead of fixing this and waiting, they nerfed the ever loving bejesus out of the one thing that was finally giving mesmers a decent time in pve.

EthanLightheart.9168:

I’m deceived that u didnt have a look at pve at which the greatswordmesmer now is very weak again compared to other classes.

Find a solution please, maybe slpit pvp /pve skills

How about WAIT AFTER FIXING A BUG THAT CAUSES 100% EXTRA DAMAGE BEFORE NERFING SOMETHING ELSE

Every other AAA mmo is more deliberate about their balance process.

They nerfed the ever loving bejesus out of might stacking without even waiting to see the impact of mind wrack NOT doing 100% extra damage.

My mesmer is now a bank toon.